Mia Wasikowska Set to Play Madame Bovary

Alice in Wonderland and Jane Eyre star Mia Wasikowska will play the title role in Occupant Entertainment’s Madame Bovary, reports Variety. Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls) will direct from a screenplay by Rose Barreneche. The film is based on the 1856 novel by Gustave Flaubert.

The trade says that “Wasikowska will play the lead role of Emma Bovary, the beautiful wife of a small-town doctor who she married to escape her father’s pig farm. She constantly tries to climb the social ladder by engaging in extra-marital affairs.

Paul Giamatti, who toplined Barthes’ Cold Souls, will play Monsieur Homais, “the town apothecary who is a close confidant of her husband Charles and threatens to reveal the protag’s steamy indiscretions.”

Filming is expected to start this fall in Europe with Joe Neurauter and Felipe Marino producing.